Naturalizing Land Dispossession: A Policy Discourse Analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate

By Takeshi Ito, Noer Fauzi Rachman, Laksmi A. Savitri

The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) signifies a strategic space within which corporations facilitated by the state find the frontier to start the new circuit of capital accumulation in the name of solving the world food and energy crisis. The grand design of the project is to accelerate the planning process of strategic development projects—mainly the agrofood sector. This paper explores the ways in which the state, through the refined concept of the modern estate, creates the need and design for producing food and agrofuels on a large scale in the frontier. It argues that the mechanisms by which land dispossession is naturalized can be seen in two areas: a) through the deployment by the state of a refined concept of corporate agricultural estate along with the discourse of the food and energy crisis and b) through a legally binding provincial regulation which mandates the local government to include the MIFEE in provincial spatial planning.